Rambling Josh

Sometimes I think I can just go there, and everything will be the same. That little house with the flat-topped roof or the farm south of town. I think I can just go there and see the people that cared, the people that never asked for much, but gave everything they could. Gave out of love, nothing more, nothing less.

I can go to those places, the places are still there, but those places, although special, are just places. Places in need of people to give it life.

For many years I wondered how abandoned houses found themselves in their lonely state of want. Now I know, and I wish I did not. They find themselves in such a state because life moves on, life moves out, life moves, but they cannot. They must stay and mark the spot, the spot where it began. The spot where the young ventured out, and the old stayed in. Stayed in to await the return of the young, with stories of love and loss, and love again.

For it always seems to begin and end with love. That’s what they showed us. They didn’t have to tell us, we wouldn’t have listened anyway, the young are like that, but what they showed was enough. It was enough to encourage us to move forward, forward when all we wanted to do was stop. Stop and sulk, stop and feel sorry for ourselves, stop and think the world that revolved around us had paused to wait for us to move forward again.

The world does not pause, it does not wait, it moves on…with or without us. We lived with them, they lived with us, we loved as one under that flat-topped roof and that farm south of town. So much has changed, so much time has gone by. Not that much, but enough. So it goes. It goes, but it should not go without saying, because saying is sometimes all we have left. Saying what we remember, saying what we hope to never forget. Just saying.

Things left unsaid are simply left. Left where they lay, never to be picked up by anyone who knows what they meant.

There is much I would give to stand under that flat-topped roof or to walk into that farm south of town and see it all as it once was. To see them all as they once were. But that is not to be. That has been. That is gone. That shall not be again.

Although that makes me sad, I am thankful that it happened, and thankful that I have them with me. Thankful that those memories are mine to touch when I need their touch. When this time, misses that time, I can venture among the places that are not the places they once were.

The little house with a flat-topped roof, the farm south of town, still there when they are needed. In sight, or simply in mind, they are there. We all have these places, we all need these places. Maybe they need us too?

The calendar says that spring is here. Judging by the twinge in my low-back from wielding a snow shovel, Mother Nature, Old Man Winter, Willard Scott…or whomever is responsible, can’t read, or simply doesn’t care what our silly Gregorian calendar and my creaky low-back have to say.

Thankfully, my good friend, Dr. St Patrick, is more reliable than the previously mentioned trio, and made a house call with a prescription strength bottle of magical leprechaun elixir to ease the various twinges and twangs that have bewitched my snow moving muscles. Thanks to the city snowplow, those snow moving muscles got to move some of the same snow twice. So it goes.

I’m not complaining about having our street plowed, there’s enough people in town that relish kicking that dead horse every time it snows. For the record, kicking a dead horse isn’t nice, nor is it an efficient use of a kick.

If I were a snowplow operator, I believe I would take great delight in seeing the expression of the guy drinking coffee on the warm side of the picture window as I left wall of snow between his freshly shoveled driveway and the street. I’d give a little wave and a honk, and use the opportunity to work on my lip reading skills.

Maybe mister snowplow operator is misunderstood, maybe he’s trying to protect me with that wall of snow? Protect us from whoever is trying to get into our yard and take our snow and the half buried garden gnome. Willard Scott dressed as Ronald McDonald perhaps? Never trust a clown, especially one that smells of rancid vegetable oil and finely chopped onion.

Sure, he could just wait for me to get distracted by the hypnotic buzz of the electric foot file grinding away at the mountain of calluses my interpretive dance class has saddled me with, and climb over the wall of snow, but who would ever think of climbing over a wall? Especially in clown shoes.

So, mister snowplow operator thank you. Thank you for protecting my family, our snow, our gnome, and our right to live clown free in the land of the brave. How do I know that mister snowplow operator is in fact a “mister”? I don’t. It is a wild assumption based off of the inordinate amount of knuckle hair on the finger that was waved in my direction when the before mentioned wall of snow was hastily constructed.

The calendar says that spring is here, it says St. Patrick’s day has passed, it says birthdays of loved ones have come and gone. Some of those loved ones have gone as well, but the day we held special for them for so many years will continue to be as such. It was their day then, so it only makes sense that it would remain so now.

Now…while we’re still here with the memory of all that their lives meant to us. Now is a long ways from then, but forward we must go. Spring is here again.

In case you haven’t noticed, it’s still more than a bit wintery outside our windows here in the Dakota’s. Snow is generally tolerable, and a bit lovely when it’s not piled on the business end of your shovel, but these relentlessly frigid temperatures, and outerwear (and underwear) defying wind chills have worn out their welcome.

My bodies been braced against the cold for so long now that it may be August before the tops of my shoulders part ways with the bottom of my ears. I’ve been duped more than once over the past week or so by the bright sunny sky outside our window. Then I walk the dog and find myself thankful for the opportunity to pick up after him when he’s done his duty. In defiance of the tyranny of winter, I shake one mitten clad fist at the deceptively sunny sky, as the little doggie doo bag of fresh heat warms the other.

Sometimes you have to take whatever little victory you can to keep it together. Other than the Labrador hot-pocket, another little victory I’ve grown fond of, is sitting on the floor in the living room in the square of sunlight and warm carpet that the afternoon sun deposits on its way by our picture window as it searches for spring.

As many of you can attest to, sitting on the floor with advanced bodily ricketiness soon leads to lying on the floor, which digresses to napping on the floor, which then leads to waking up 30-minutes later lacking the ability to get up off of the floor. At that point, if you’ve played your cards right, you have an extra, and hopefully unused, doggie doo bag left in your pocket from the previously mentioned dog walk on the frozen tundra, and you can stay right where you’re at.

A quick update from the Institute for the Study of People Past Their “Best By” Date…they have determined that Advanced Bodily Ricketiness (ABR) is an irreversible condition brought on by living and exasperated by not dying. Who are “they”? Don’t ask questions, just trust that “they” know what they’re talking about, because, as you know, that’s what “they” say. Whoever they are.

Lying on the floor, in that lovely little sundrenched square of warm polypropylene fiber shag, I thought about how much time I had spent on the floor playing with my children back when they were “floor age”. Long ago, before they pulled themselves up and got on with all that growing up makes us get on with. So it goes.

My brother Gabe, and his wife Marki, have two rambunctious boys that have a bit of floor age left in them, and I always enjoy mixing it up with them on their level. Rug-burns, Nerf dart welts, Big Foot sightings…never a dull moment at their level. Simple, but never dull…if only that square of sun would stick around a little longer. Maybe it’ll be back tomorrow?

They say spring is coming. They say a lot of things.

Awhile back there was a newspaper article headline that caught my attention, “Deer Poacher Sentenced to Watch “Bambi” Once a Month”. The gist of the article, for those that prefer the gist of things over the totality of things, was that some guy in Missouri poached hundreds of trophy bucks, got caught (obviously), was sentenced to one-year in prison, and must watch the Disney movie “Bambi” once a month while serving out his prison sentence.

The judge’s reasoning behind the unique sentencing was that he was hoping to illicit some sort of “emotional response” from the convicted poacher.

Once a month? That seems to be an unfairly light sentence. I shot one deer when I was 13-years old (legally), felt so bad that I didn’t give it another try for about 25-years, and then felt so bad that I don’t intend on doing it again. Unless it’s in self-defense, can’t let those young bucks push you around.

Two deer, and I was sentenced to watch “Bambi” twelve times a day for roughly three years. Then our daughter discovered “The Lion King” and my “Bambi” sentence was reduced to four times a day. There’s a lot of fine print and unspoken vagaries that come along with the life sentence of fatherhood. A lot of “emotional responses” too, mostly good, many unforgettable.

Emotional responses that far surpass anything a silly movie with talking animals could illicit (teapots, and all sorts of houseware, once “Beauty and the Beast was added to the sentence). Real life, the ups, the downs, the all arounds. The “good stuff”, as the sleeveless troubadour, Kenny Chesney, referred to it in a song he sleevelessly sang while sleevelessly strumming his six-string.

There’s a line in “Bambi” that I used to use on occasion when innocent little Sierra would ask me, “Where’s mommy?” It may seem a bit juvenile, bordering on mean, but none of us are issued a parenthood manual explaining what may or may not scar a child for life, so I would respond, “Your mother can’t be with you anymore, the hunters have taken her away.”

She only cried the first half-dozen times I rolled out that old chestnut. I suppose you could chalk it up to passive-aggressive behavior brought on my excessive exposure to talking animals attempting to impart morals on children whose parents were failing to do so. Low-fat diets and khaki pants with puffy-pleats were all the rage then too, so there was a general climate of madness in society. We were all victims. So it goes.

I hope the “Bambi” treatment teaches that stone cold poacher a lesson or two. If anything it’ll make his one-year sentence feel a bit longer. They should sentence him to wear puffy-pleated khaki pants and sing “Be Our Guest” to each new inmate brought in during his time at the prison. “No one’s gloomy or complaining while the flatware’s entertaining…we tell jokes…I do tricks with my fellow candlesticks….”

Disney themed prisons. Why should parents have all the fun?

A few months back we bought half a beef from my wife’s hairdresser. To be clear, Dawn doesn’t go to a meat locker to get her hair done, although that would be an interesting business model. “Moo-Mousse” perhaps? Maybe “Cowlicked”? I always found the old gibe, “he looks like he combed his hair with a pork chop” to be humorous. In the battle for clientele, “Cowlicked” could use it as a smear campaign against the hair-and-hock-hacks at “Moo-Mousse”.

Actually, we bought half a cow, but upon discovering that half a cow is not all that playful, we settled on half a beef. Maybe I should investigate my wife’s hairdresser a bit? Ensure that there isn’t any casual chit-chat going on regarding half a husband. You never know what they’re capable of when they get all hopped up on hair dye fumes.

We were asked if we wanted any of the offal, and being adventurous (idiotic), I said we would take the liver, heart, tail and tongue. I didn’t ask what the owner of the other half of our cow got, but through the process of elimination, I would decline any dinner party invitations from them.

There are a couple of reasons why I requested the offal, reasons that I will not entertain the next time my wife’s hairdresser calls for a hit on one of their cows. One reason is that I remembered opening the freezer at my grandparents' house to grab a green Fla-Vor-Ice freeze pop, and seeing a massive frozen cow tongue stretched out to its full length in plastic wrap.

Lacking the ability to resist idiotic inclinations, I held the tongue in front of my mouth and chased my brother around until Grandma Rose suggested otherwise. Oh, if I had a nickel for every time I heard, “Don’t run with a cow tongue in your mouth, you could choke.” A grandma must really question where she went wrong when she hears those words coming out of her mouth.

Knucklehead nostalgia aside, the other reasons for my offal request were academic and curiosity based. I teach a lot of health and nutrition courses, and offal is touted as healthy and nutritious, so I wanted some personal offal experience to share with my students.

Personal offal experience number one, was attempting to make my own liverwurst. I like liverwurst, what I made was not liverwurst. Possibly, liverworst, and most definitely awful. Our dog, who normally devours first and asks questions second, hesitated before helping me dispose of the grisly evidence.

Personal offal experience number two, was perpetrated by my wife. Inspired by the desire to create freezer space, Dawn pushed aside the heart and tongue to wrangle the last of the liver from the depths of the freezer. A liver and onion recipe was retrieved from our old friend, Chef Google, the very same chef that led me down the wayward liverwurst path. So it goes.

We reached through the steamy mist rising from our plates, clinked our wine glasses, tried not to think of Sir Anthony Hopkins suggestion of “fava beans and a nice chianti”, and dug in…sort of. The first few bites were overwhelmingly “ok”, and then the not-so-subtle taste and texture revealed itself, and the culinary experience began its rapid descent. We attempted to slow the descent by demoting our wine to mouthwash, but one can only ask so much from a bargain bin Riesling.

They say that when a pack of wolves brings down a prey that the alpha wolf gets the liver, and the rest of the pack gets the meat. That’s taking one for the team. Perhaps the alpha wolf is the wolf that was absent on the day the pack made nominations and voted for the alpha wolf position?

“Hey Wally, we elected you alpha wolf at the pack meeting last night.” Exasperated, Wally exclaims, “Meeting? What meeting?” “Oh, I guess you didn’t get the message, must have got lost in all the howling and such, but yeah, the vote was unanimous. Congratulations.”

Our dog won’t miss the next pack meeting.

We tend to accumulate a lot of “things” as we move through life. Some of these things are for a specific use, such as a toaster oven or a drawer full of pens (some of which even work). We hold onto these things for as long as they serve their purpose and do whatever it is we rely on them to do.

Some things we hold onto for other reasons. Reasons that go beyond the basic utility of the thing, reasons that only we may know and appreciate. Things that belonged to people we care about, people that may not be with us anymore. We hold onto these things because they serve a purpose, they are a tie that binds us physically to people we can no longer be in the physical presence of.

Some of these things belong to people that are still a part of our life, but the thing takes us to a place and time that has passed. People, time, places…like time machines, these things transport us.

Of course, like anything, this accumulation of things can go too far. Our time machine can begin to look like a dumpster, so overly laden with things that it’ll cease to take us anywhere. Except, perhaps, to a starring role on the latest episode of “Hoarders”. We all have our things, we just need to be vigilant in preventing our things from having us. So it goes.

This past summer, while sitting alone in the quiet of our cabin, I saw some things that made me think, made me remember, made me feel. Solitude (and a wee dram of rum) can take you to unexpected places, and this time it took me to a song. The song is oddly enough called “Things”. I am quite thankful for all the people that have painted the world I see, and look forward to adding a verse here-and-there as life continues to unfold.

Chorus:

I got things that mean something to me

They belonged to people who painted the world I see

To anyone else these things don’t mean much

But to me they’re pieces of heaven I can touch

Verse 1:

An old John Deere hat that wore upon his head

As he joked and laughed in the shade of his Southwind

A coffee pot pours out a cup of her love

Always serving others, now she’s our angel above

Verse 2:

A drill and hammer well worn by his hands

A well-built life, that to this day still stands

A deck of cards that brought her family together

When you’re young these things seem to be forever

Chorus

Verse 3:

A pair of cleats that he wore upon his feet

Fair and balanced, forever young, that’s what I see

Books of photographs, she’s captured everyone

A heart so big, a smile so wide, she taught us how to love

Verse 4:

A stack of love letters written from her heart to mine

Strength, beauty and devotion, stretching through time

Pictures in crayon that say “Daddy and Me”

Now they’re out in the world, finding what it needs them to be

Chorus

Outro:

All these people painted the world I see

All these things are not just things to me

Another semester is in the gradebook. The book told various academic stories, some ending in triumph, some in tragedy, and most lingering somewhere in between. The letters associated with each of these academic stories, the A’s down to the F’s, were laid in place by various human stories.

Stories of students finding meaning and purpose in their course work, and in their lives. Stories of students finding that college wasn’t for them. Stories of students just doing what they have to do to get by, and move a little closer to a yet to be determined destination. These stories, in all there forms, replay themselves year-after-year, and most likely always will.

Over the course of every semester a few students go AWOL academically. Some show up again a few weeks before finals with a new found urgency, asking…begging, “What can I do to pass this class?” A question that always brings forth a flood of sarcastic comments that make my right eye twitch as I struggle to contain them. My left eye is decidedly lazy, and gazes upon the student with detached disinterest.

Much as one would gaze upon anyone asking you what the very least amount of thought and effort is that they must put into something that you have put a tremendous amount of thought and effort into creating. Once the right eye stops twitching, I generally settle on detached disinterest…and mild sarcasm…so as not to complete disappoint my right eye and my mom.

Speaking of my mom, on December 18th, her and my dad (as far as I know), celebrated their 47th wedding anniversary. 47-years…that’s a long time to live in close proximity to the same human. That’s a year longer than I’ve been alive, well seven months, but who’s counting. Thank you Mom and Dad for the love story you’ve written over the years. It’s been an inspiration and a pleasure to be a part of.

Happy holidays everyone, you won’t be hearing from me again until next year, unless my wife has “plans” for me over the holidays. As my high school shop teacher, Leonard Savelkoul, once said, “We’re all alone down here, and “accidents” happen in the shop.” I would like to acknowledge the fact that if it weren’t for my wife’s planning, and her love of the Christmas season, many of our family and friends would get nothing from our household. No cookies, no cards, no gifts…no nothing.

It’s not that I don’t like the holidays, or my family and friends. I don’t really know what it is? Maybe it’s the fact that it takes me a good while to come to terms with the memories of Christmas past, before I can fully enjoy Christmas present? Whatever the reason, I am thankful for the tremendous thought and effort my wife puts into making the holidays special.

Maybe the grief I give my wife over the Hallmark Christmas movies she loves so much is founded in my own deep seeded feelings of insecure holiday jolliness? Or…maybe they are highly predictable sapfests, acted out by Hollywood flunkies who most likely cry mournful tears of regret for their once promising acting career each time the director yells “cut”. Exceedingly good looking Hollywood flunkies, with perfect hair and teeth, draped in form fitting flannel and Santa hats, but flunkies just the same. Maybe I should have quit while I was ahead? So it goes.

Each of us plays a part in a story of some sort. I hope you’re inspired to shoot for an “A” in yours. Happy Holidays.

Happy December. Many of you are most likely treading around, elf ears deep, in the rising tide of the holiday season, lashing yule logs together to stay afloat. Next month that tide will subside, and we’ll give a new year a go. This ebb and flow seems slow in the moment, but quite fleeting when one turns their attention towards all that has come and gone.

My wife and I started a family tradition, back when the kids were little, of venturing out into the Black Hills and cutting down our Christmas tree. With a Christmas tree permit of course. The authorities kick down your door and tear a wing off of your angel for a first offense Christmas tree poaching.

I’m not sure if we set out to start a family tradition at the time, or if it was just something we did once, and kept doing year-after-year? This year, like each of those past years, we went out into the Black Hills and found our Christmas tree. This year, unlike each of those past years, the “we” consisted of Dawn, myself, and our dog Pre. The kids are off “adulting”, revealing yet another territory our empty nest has encompassed. So it goes.

Before you get too far along in imagining us forlornly shuffling through the woods, I should inform you that a few years back the Richter family added this tradition as well, and began joining us for their own Christmas tree hunt. As always, Dawn and I enjoyed the company of my good friend Paul, his wife Jodi, and their four kids.

Paul and Jodi’s children haven’t fled to adulthood yet, so they can help Dawn and I deal with this now, and we’ll help them deal with it later. When their kids ditch them and the family traditions they’ve worked so hard to carry on through the years, we’ll be there. Four old people shuffling through the woods in search of Christmas past. I think I just wrote the plot to a Hallmark Christmas special.

I’ve decorated quite a few Christmas trees in my day, but this one proved to be the most difficult yet. Each ornament I took from the box of decorations had a memory attached to it, and I struggled with the weight of those memories. Dawn put a positive spin on the event, calling it our “honeymoon tree”, and we helped each other navigate yet another change in our lives.

Dawn suggested we watch a Christmas movie once the tree was properly festooned with memories from Christmas past. I was in the mood to wallow a bit longer in the past, and we watched home videos from Christmas 2002. I realized this had the potential of kicking me while I was down, but surprisingly, I found it quite cathartic. As I watched seven-year-old Sierra and three-year-old Jackson bounce around on screen, I felt some of that heaviness lift, and be replaced with gratitude.

The year 2002, sixteen short years ago (for the math impaired). Seems like you should be able to turn around and find everything and everyone it held not much more than an arm’s length away, but I found much of it has drifted beyond the capabilities of my reach.

What has changed in your life since 2002? I would imagine there’s been some good, and there’s been some bad, as that seems to be the way of things. There’s certainly nothing wrong with pausing our forward momentum to honor our memories with a few tears now and then, but that trees not going to decorate itself. Forward we must go.

Happy Thanksgiving. I’m in week 14 of our 16 week fall semester, that time of the semester when niceties are approaching their limits and the students and instructors have had enough of one another. Students are beginning to concern themselves with the final projects they were told to concern themselves with back in week one. Back in week one when I told them, “the semester goes fast, don’t put this off until week 14”…so it goes. I’d be surprised if went any other way.

There’s always a few of those high achiever type students, who consider anything less than 100% on any and all assignments a failure, and, of course, a few more students who consider anything not failing as “good enough”. Making these two ends of the academic ambition scale do group work together is a diabolical little game I like to play. A game played with the hope that both parties will come away with some life-lessons, a smidge of wisdom, and the same number of teeth they started the project with.

“Hope”, a four-letter word that often inadvertently winds up becoming the precursor to a variety of other four-letter words. Some of which I learned while handing my dad the tool he hadn’t hoped for while he was lying on the gravel in the driveway, wedged under whichever vehicle needed to be tinkered on that particular day.

“Tinkered” seems a bit too jovial of a word to describe any of the driveway automotive repairs I witnessed. You would be surprised how accurately you can judge the irritation level of someone just by observing the “attitude” of their cowboy boots sticking out from under a car. Perhaps I should have been less observant of dad’s “angry” Tony Lama’s, and a bit more focused on my tool gopher task. Group work…father and son tinkering on the car in the driveway…oh the lessons learned.

Dad learned that a career as an auto mechanic was not in the cards for his eldest son, and I learned that, with the proper motivation, dad, and his miffed Tony Lama’s, could slide out from under a car, across gravel, with impressive expedience and nary a hint of discomfort. “Ohhh, that wrench. Why didn’t you say something? I’m just standing here, you were all comfy in the gravel under the car.” Those words knew better than to move from my mind to my mouth.

There’s a meme that I share with my students at the beginning of group projects, “When I die, I want the people I did group projects with to lower me into my grave so they can let me down one last time.” The potential for group work to go south is quite high, but when it works it’s quite gratifying for all involved. Keep that in mind as preparations for all the holiday gatherings begin to unfold.

Be helpful. Do what you can, when you can, for everyone you can. Dazzle your host and hostess, leave them hopeful that you and your ugly sweater (or whatever you call your date) will come again.

Happy Holidays.

A few weeks back, a clan of sorts convened at our cabin in Montana for the First Annual Colter Wall Singing Bee and general merriment. If you don’t know who Colter Wall is, take a stroll through YouTube, you might fancy his music. If you don’t know what general merriment entails, your clan has failed you, find a new clan.

Or, perhaps, and more likely, you have failed your clan? Perhaps, your presence scatters general merriment hither and yon, smothering it into a docile, dead-eyed, head nodding existence. How does one know if the clan or the individual is at fault for the absence of general merriment? As Robert Pirsig put it in his book, Zen and Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, “The place to improve the world is first in one’s own heart and head and hands, and then work outward from there.”

This particular clan of seven people, and two dogs, holed up in an 18x20 one-room log cabin with no electricity, no cellular service, and no indoor plumbing for a few days on a cold and snowy October weekend. The clan was comprised of myself, our daughter Sierra, her “man friend” Troy, their friend Brittany, my brother Gabe, his friend and co-worker Terry Knutson, and Gabe’s brother-in-law Bradley Rosenquist. If any of these people shirked any duties, or called in sick during this time, I apologize for unraveling their stories.

Knowing how busy life can be, I sent the call out for this gathering a month or so in advance, to allow time for schedules to be bent and twisted a bit, if one was so inclined to do so. There were a few who weren’t able to make it work this time around, but the “First Annual” implies that a second annual may be forthcoming. For those that were willing, and/or able, to give up one of their yearly issued 52 weekends, I am quite grateful.

As the elder of the clan, there were times when I had to remove myself from the group gathered around the kitchen table to reload by the fire. In a one-room cabin you’re never too far removed from anything or anybody, but it was enjoyable to just sit and listen to the “youngsters” laugh and visit about everything and nothing. Good people. All with a firm grasp of the concept of general merriment.

Everyone departed on Sunday, but I had a few more days off, so I farted around the cabin until Tuesday. After a few days of late nights, singing, laughing, and what have you, I suddenly found myself alone by the fire, surrounded by silence. Within that silence I found myself wishing that the door of the cabin would suddenly swing open and everyone would jostle in, take their places around the table, and make the rafters roar once again. So it goes.

Times like this come and go so quickly, but the memories can be relied upon for as long as our memory allows. I look at the empty chairs surrounding the table and see them all, I sit in the flickering light of the fireplace and hear the laughter and music the cabin walls strained to contain. I lie in bed and smile as I recall the chorus of snores coming from all corners of the cabin. Snores of people that gave general merriment all they had, snores of a content clan.